


Cardiac Arrest

by soubriquet



Series: What I Gave [8]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams, Heart Attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/soubriquet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cardiac arrest |ˈkärdēˌak əˈrest|<br/>a sudden, sometimes temporary, cessation of function of the heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardiac Arrest

David is sitting on the edge of a bed, in a dark room, staring transfixed at a digital screen. It floods him in light, green, such as it is in the hospital, and sharpens the creases of the sheets pulled up around him. The tension shows in his shoulders, bunching up tight and whipcord strong beneath his shirt, though defined by their very infirmity- standing out in strokes of tendons over thin bones. 

He looks awful, and in dire need of a hair cut (or maybe by this stage, just a hair _wash_ ), the way it all pushes outward in choppy spikes that faintly suggest curls. Whatever he sees on the monitor is doing nothing to calm him - perhaps it's the very reason for his madness, or the adrenaline keeping him locked almost unwaveringly in position. Maybe it just calls to something he can't take his mind off.

Either way, in your dream, he's awake. 

"Let it go," you say, coming over to prise the humming screen from his hands for the fourth time. "It's too late." He looks up at you as you near, and your fingers close over his. He looks… _haggard_. He looks hard up, but that's hardly the word. Instead of taking it away, you scoot sideways and sit down on the hospital bed, next to him. At least he's stopped looking at it.

"What'll I do, Con?" The words are quiet, frail, almost. Thin and frighteningly bare, like he's baring himself to you and you wish he wouldn't, you wish he had _something_ to hide. The way we can't tell anyone how it feels when blood rushes around the heart and down the arm and throbs in a cut at the end of your thumb as it goes by.

"You'll sit. Sleep and get better." 

He doesn't answer. Pulls away, his hand coming out of yours as he sets the screen back on his bedside. He looks sick, like a great claw twisting, yanking at your heart, pulling great roots of fear out of your throat. Terrifying. 

He doesn't look at you as he pulls the sheet up again, lays back against the pillow, stares depreciatingly to one side, his eyes wide and his skin pulled tight with thinking. 

Leaning over, you don't know what you're thinking, vaguely wondering if this was it and it required an intervention of the soul for you to finally do this, but you go for it anyway. His gaze switches to yours in the seconds before you, carefully, press your lips to the curve of his cheekbone. Dry, calm, that's all you want.

It takes you by surprise when he reacts, turning and fisting his hands in the back of your hair so as to keep you from leaving. And his turning means your target moves, in slow motion your lips brush together and David _opens_. 

You don't know how long you spend kissing him. You lose yourself in feeling, in the acquisition of breath from another soul, feeling the heat of the blood in his veins and you think maybe you can begin to understand...

He smiles. Leans back, the corners of his eyes crinkled, finally, he looks _free_. 

"Con," he says. "I a-"

He seizes up. Arches straight from the bed and locks rigid, breath vanishing, and then _too long_ later coming back in a rush, short pants of oxygen, and you're scrambling back, trying to give him space, but by then he's reeling, clutching out for you with limbs that don't want to function. It's never frightened you so badly, to see such agony expressed so quietly. 

You slam the palm of your hand into the button beside his bed, the call for a nurse, then jam it again, but the hall remains empty, and you are useless. It was the only moment you had alone together and now, you can't do anything.

**Author's Note:**

> (The David in his head knows it's coming.)


End file.
